Louisbourg is place to be this summer

Fortress of Louisbourg is the best place in this country for tourists to visit this year, a travel website says.

The historic site is No. 1 because “Louisbourg celebrates its 300th anniversary and will do so with panache,” a story posted on vacay.ca says.

It says the Louisbourg 300 festivities “feature a month-long fete with additional music, cultural attractions and a harbourside market in July.”

Other events and celebrations have been planned for the summer, including a regatta on the water surrounding the fortress.

“As Louisbourg heralds its tricentennial, it gives Canadians an opportunity to reflect on how important of a place it is to the nation’s history,” says vacay.ca, a Canadian website. The 18th-century fortification was a major French colonial settlement. The fortress became a national historic site in 1928, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia.

“Louisbourg in some ways is a microcosm of what Canada eventually developed into, which is a multicultural, multilingual society,” a Parks Canada officer at the fortress told vacay.ca.

“On any given day in the early 1700s, you could hear five or more languages spoken within the fortified walls. That multiculturalism was due to the fishing industry and the variety of Europeans it employed,” the website’s article says.

The site called the fortress “a living museum.”

Vacay.ca’s travel experts, including writers, editors and photographers, chose Fortress of Louisbourg as the top destination for 2013.